Story from Seattle
Example Elsewhere :SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER on Moses Lake accepts challenge to eat better and get more exercise from Monday, November 15, 2004. Original source: Reporter, JULIE DAVIDOW. Across the street from City Hall, sits a garden. It's about half a block split into many mini-gardens. The plots are tended by residents. Residents can rent the garden plots for $5 to $20 a year; the city pays for water. This land is a site of a citywide effort started three years ago to eat better and exercise more. That town determined to shape up and lose weight. Pittsburgh can do the same. The solution is no quick fix, no fad diet, but rather an attempt to gradually transform lifestyles. "People don't seem to have time to get out and do the things that are better for their health," said Bill Jones. "They're just not getting out unless they have a reason, and this kind of gardening gives people a reason." The city's fat-fighting program uses seed money from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington was among the first group of states to receive grants three years ago to address obesity. The money, $2.6 million so far, is meant to spur programs that turn the tide of obesity by promoting physical activity and healthy eating. Moses Lake received about $135,000. * Safe bicycle routes to schools, * Train child care providers to cut kids' television time. * Make it easier to get around on foot. * Focus on breast-feeding. Studies suggest that breast-feeding might decrease a child's odds of obesity later in life. Several businesses have set aside rooms for mothers to breast-feed while shopping downtown. * Improving an existing system of walking and biking trails: rail maps, posted signs, link up pathways that dead-end. "The ultimate goal is to create an environment that provides the healthy choice as the easy choice," said Kyle Unland, obesity prevention coordinator for the state. "It's kind of like, if you build it, they will come. In Pittsburgh, we're building skate parks for breaking bones or stadium seats with cup holders for spectators. With gardens, you don't really build much at all. This is not a bricks and mortar effort. So, it is lost upon the old-school leaders. "We've always gone right to the individual and said this is how you exercise more and eat better," Unland said. "But here we are with our obesity rates still rising with a population getting heavier and more sedentary." Gardens represent an intimate relationship with the land. Grow food to put on the dinner table. "You can go out and pick your carrots, chop them up and put them in a soup, rather than going to the grocery store," said Andrew Bechyne, a city park employee. "You think about what you have in the garden rather than what's easy." "I'm not a walker or a hiker or a biker," said Jones, the retired farmer. "That's for young people," he said while chopping down dead stalks with a machete in a friend's plot. Jones and Ellie Chadwick, a retired school librarian, got to know each other at the garden on early summer mornings while everyone else was dashing off to work. Chadwick said she used to spend her mornings drinking coffee and watching television. "I hated it," she said. "This has really been good for me. I think it's the best thing Moses Lake has ever done." Alicia Perkins said her daughter, 6-year-old Maurissa Russ, has always liked vegetables, but caring for a pumpkin patch with her Girl Scout troop has piqued her curiosity about the purple-leafed lettuce and bright yellow squash she spies in neighboring plots. "In my family, we fight a weight problem," Perkins said. "I like this because it's teaching her how to eat healthy. It's making her willing to try new things." Other than former Mayor Lee Blackwell, who lost 35 pounds to promote Moses Lake's new healthy living approach, there's little direct evidence of a collective slim-down. But no one expects to see immediate results, anyway. It could take a decade before the town's efforts are reflected in survey data. And that's not the point, Goodwin said. "If we've made a difference in policy and environment, that's the goal," Goodwin said. "There won't be a scale weighing people, no." Data How many of our citizens are overweight? In Washington, 59 percent of adults are either overweight or obese (compared with 65 percent nationwide).